Pohnpei, Micronesia

Coincidently while we were there a traditional feast (kamadipw) was taking place. Men prepared sakau (kava), pig, yams and breadfruit for the kamadipw feastival. We got the chance to visit and experience the festival first hand.

Our tour group prepared Kava for us, or as it’s known in MFS, Sakau. It’s a locally anesthetic and mildly narcotic drink made from the crushed roots of a particular pepper plant. The root juice is mixed with water and squeezed through fibrous strips of hibiscus bark. Though the drink looks and tastes like mud, after drinking a sense of peace and numbing of the mouth occurs as the drink takes it’s effect.

taro root and pigs

sakau (kava) root 

Mashing the sukau

hibiscus bark to squeeze the sakau

squeezing the sakua

drinking it

it's not pretty looking... the texture is a bit like slimy mud

Traditional dinner of breadfruit, banana and coconut milk, raw fish, cooked fish, prawns, mangrove crabs, taro root.